Summer Olympics Stages Chinese Duplicity

I like to watch the summer Olympics if it wasn't for all the commercials and the events that NBC has decided to air as the most important or interesting according to them.

I guess it's their network and they can do what the want but that doesn't mean I have to watch it - I have been turning on the Tennis Channel and watching reruns of past Grand Slam finals or the Speed channel for 'what ever' is on. As you might guess, I don't watch much television and never the nightly news. There are occasions when I do watch the Fox News channel.

Ralph Peters has a different take on the games and his point is well taken - I certainly don't like the idea that just about everything I buy is made in China and is other than a quality product. I mean just about everything IS made in china - really - everything.

Peters highlights the bloodier side of the communists here as he or someone should given Chinese history as communists. Remember, a communist by any other name is still a communist no matter what the 'drive by media' in this country says.

Keep the faith while we dig in for the long 'march' for freedom and Democracy.

OLYMPIC BACKFIRE
By RALPH PETERS

I RARELY watch sports on TV. I'm a doer, not a viewer. But I usually make an exception for the Olympics. Not this year. I'm staging my own private boycott. Anyway, I'm more interested in what's going to happen /outside/ of the sports facilities. I'm thrilled to see global spotlights turned on Red Chinese tyranny ("Red" is for the bloodshed in Tibet, Darfur, Zimbabwe, Burma and China itself).

The butchers in Beijing thought they could buy a happy-face propaganda image, that they could stage-manage the Olympics the way Stalin's PR boys seduced the New York Times as millions died. Boy, did their ignorance of the suppleness of today's communications networks backfire.

President Hu Jintao and his cadres can keep a lid on most bad news at home - but all their censorship, denied visas, hotel-room-monitoring, dissident detentions, monstrous pollution and general police-state tactics won't be enough to fool the rest of the world. Oh, there'll be glittering pomp and circumstance at the opening ceremony (if anyone can see it through the smog). And our establishment media will make nice - at least until the games are over - to avoid "technical problems with the satellite feed." But I'm counting on the blogosphere to shame "mainstream" journalists into telling /some/ of the truth.

Expecting a red-carpet stroll with flashbulbs popping, Beijing's post-Mao mafiosi dropped their (dirty) drawers in public instead. Spare me the "Olympic spirit" piety. Tell that to the raped and dead of Darfur, to the tortured of Tibet and to all the mom-and-pop stall owners in Africa put out of business by ruthless Chinese exploitation (I've been there: The Chinese are /hated/ with a purple passion).

And don't try to blow me off as a jingoist seeking a confrontation. I just want justice and fairness - including fair trade that doesn't dispossess US workers or poison kids with toys doused with lead. The Chinese aren't going to get away with their attempt to manipulate the Olympics - but a more important issue is their currency manipulation, which allows them to dump junk products on the US market (and others).

My own personal revelation of just how greedy American corporations profiting from the China trade can be came on April 1, 2001 - when a hot-dogging Chinese military pilot collided with a US Navy reconnaissance aircraft (with a 24-sailor crew) in international waters off Hainan Island.

Forced to land on Chinese soil, the crew of the damaged US plane was taken prisoner. But the stunner was this: Capitol Hill /didn't/ rally round our troops.Why? Because the instant the news broke, lobbyists for the unscrupulous minority of US corporations profiting from collusion with Beijing rushed to the Hill to say, /Let's not be hasty and anger the Chinese, let's see/ their/ side of this. (And screw our sailors.)/So we did.

Eventually, the Bush administration won the crew's release with a groveling apology. And the Chinese continued to cheat on trade with the bipartisan blessing of Congress. Right then I began my one-man protest - an effort to avoid subsidizing Beijing. It can be hard. Greedy businesses try to slip goods past you. You have to crack the code: When a product is advertised as "imported," 20-1 it's being dumped by China and its capitalist running dogs. And I /still/ get bamboozled: A work-out bench ordered online recently turned out to be made in China, complete with badly aligned screw holes and flaking paint (I suppose it helps "get the lead out" of your workout).

Isn't it time for all imported products to be /visibly/ labeled with their country of origin? Let's put "made in China" right on the price-tag, in bold letters. Let the consumer decide if he or she wants decomposing clothing and poisoned toys.

Despite a belated spot of criticism of China's human-rights record, President Bush has crawled into Beijing to give a savage regime his public blessing. As I've noted before, it's as if FDR had gone to the Berlin Olympics to hug Hitler.

I wish our athletes well - hope they can breathe. I also hope a few journalists tell the truth about China beyond those fancy stadiums built on the bones of workers and peasants. Over the next two weeks, Chinese athletes will win a lot of medals. But the tyrants in Beijing are going to learn that the $44 billion they've spent to fool the world is only going to make /them/ look like fools.

Ralph Peters' latest book is "Looking For Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World."